Angry Birds the movie to be produced in-house by Rovio

Angry Birds app developer Rovio has announced it is to produce the much anticipated Angry Birds movie in-house following the acquisition of an animation studio in its native Finland.

Although the company behind the globally dominating mega app have yet to formerly announce who will be responsible for the production of the Angry Birds flick, Peter Vesterbacka, Rovio’s Chief Marketing Officer announced in an interview with The Telegraph: “You can put one and one together - if you look at the fact we bought an animation studio last week and we’re basically beefing up our capabilities in the animation area – you can see we are making a lot of this [the movie] ourselves.”

With more than 200 million downloads of Angry Birds releases across all leading mobile platforms, the Angry Birds brand has since branched out to cover off all manner of merchandise from iPhone and iPad cases to plush toys and speaker systems.

The movie, which is expected to take in the region of three years to create, marks a massive step in the growth of the Angry Bird brand. Speaking on the decision to produce the film in-house Vesterbacka announced: “For us the only thing that we care about is our fans and our brand, so why would we give away the control of our brand to someone else.”

He added: “We are not ruling out working with the studios at some point…but we don’t have to do what everyone else is doing, so we are perfectly OK going against the conventional wisdom.”

With the life span of the Angry Birds franchise seemingly stretched to its limits with a three year production time for the movie, Vesterbacka was keen to stress the film will not mark the end for the franchise that has stemmed from a mobile application.

“We are not just a games company. We want to become a next generation entertainment franchise. Making a movie is just one part of our game plan. We are here to make Angry Birds a permanent part of pop culture – like Mickey Mouse or Mario - and if making a movie helps with that then that’s great. But it’s not like making a move is our ultimate goal.”

Will the Angry Birds movie continue the brands global popularity or miss the app’s fleeting popularity and fail to make an impact? Let us know what you think via the T3 Twitter and Facebook feeds.